Libertarianism

The other day I was complaining about stupid liberals. Libertarians are not usually the friends of animals and I thought it was surprising because the idea of coercion is so easily extended to include animals. Plus the question of whether animals can be coerced in a meaningful way can be reduced to questions that can be investigated in a scientific way. Anyway, Robert Nozick, who provides one of the most famous and best philosophical defenses of libertarianism, does take animals into account; he thinks it’s difficult to defend conventional meat eating based on minimal assumptions about animals. And this was in 1974, before Peter Singers book Animal Liberation. I don’t know why other liberals didn’t follow his lead (maybe animals are just to yummy) but Nozick’s treatment of animals was a pleasant surprise.